The firm wants to become what iOS and Android are to
the mobile application world.

You might have heard of the high-speed market-maker Citadel
Securities or the interdealer broker TP ICAP. Then there's
TruMid, the bond-trading platform backed by George Soros and
Peter Thiel, and the Treasury-trading startup OpenDoor.

One little-known firm connects them all — and many more Wall
Street trading firms — behind the scenes: OpenFin. Now the
startup, which helps electronic-trading firms build their desktop
applications, is getting its moment in the spotlight.

The firm has raised $15 million in a Series B fundraising round
from investors including JPMorgan, the fintech backer Euclid
Opportunities, and the high-speed trading firm DRW. Bain Capital
Ventures,
Pivot Investment Partners, and Nyca Partners have already
invested in the firm, as have the likes of Cris Conde, former CEO
of SunGard, and Tom Glocer, former CEO of Thomson Reuters.

The vision, according to OpenFin CEO Mazy Dar, a former chief
strategy officer at Creditex, is to become to Wall Street what
iOS and Android are to the mobile application world.

"When you have the iOS layer, and Android, that is the layer that
enables developers to know what they are building their app in,"
Dar said. That's what OpenFin aims to become.

The firm already has 35 investment banks and trading firms signed
up, according to Dar, and it powers applications licensed on over
100,000 desktops. He said the firm has been increasing revenue
100% year-over-year for the past few years and is close to being
cash flow positive. The $15 million investment will enable the
firm to expand — Dar plans to double headcount from 25 in New
York and London currently to 50 within a year.

The aim is to become "the industrywide operating layer," he said.
Right now, OpenFin is typically delivered to a desktop together
with an application that runs on it. The hope is that, in time,
OpenFin will be on the desktop independent of any application,
becoming a kind of finance application ecosystem of its own.

"OpenFin enabled us to reach hundreds of client desktops
instantly with an operating layer already vetted by many major
banks and financial institutions," said Tony Schiavo, chief
technology officer at TruMid.

There are three key pillars to OpenFin's strategy. The first is
to have apps that can be downloaded and updated easily — the same
way you would download apps on your phone — and then have them
update regularly.

Then there's the layer of security, a key issue for any Wall
Street institution. Finally, there is interoperability, or
letting the apps talk to one another — the same way social media
apps connect on your phone.

"We're in a world where apps are siloed and by and large do not
talk to one another," Dar said. "The human sitting in front of
the six monitors is the integration layer. With OpenFin, they are
now able to talk to one another, share data and contacts."